Speak up and let Afrikaans be
GENADENDAL lies just about 20km off the N2. Once called the Athens of southern Africa, it’s glory days are gone, but its museum, which stands proud and imposing on Moravian Square, where the light-terracotta painted Moravian Church is a neighbour, today still eloquently tells the story of a heritage and legacy to be proud of.
In that heritage there’s also the pain of being conquered and dispossessed and, as is often the case, seeing one’s history being distorted. So, for example, Genadendal has achieved some historic firsts, which the propaganda masters of the former government appropriated and used to build the myth of Afrikanerdom and Afrikaans.
They were so successful in claiming Afrikaans as their language that the Afrikaans language became known as the language of the oppressor. Ironically, the oppressors were not the first people to speak this language – neither were they the ones who published the first Afrikaans newspaper.
Indeed, a copy of Die Bode in the Genadendal Museum exposes one of the many lies popularised by the former regime. These lies helped to besmirch the Afrikaans language. But let’s face it: Afrikaans is an African language that first rolled off the lips of those people which the present day South African rulers don’t regard as African.
And what’s more, it’s a language still proudly spoken in Genadendal, the Bo-Kaap, Cape Flats, and many parts of South Africa. Indeed, the biggest population group in the Western Cape, which the ANC outrageously does not recognise as African, calls Afrikaans their first language. This group are the descendants of the first people. They are called coloureds, or brown people.
The government may call them what they want, but that will not change the fact that their forefathers were the first freedom fighters, facing the Portuguese in Table Bay in 1510. As was the case with the former political dispensation, the new one does not celebrate these military victories because to do so would be saying that this land belonged to the descendants of the first people and not the new rulers.
So, what does all of the above have to do with the debate raging at Stellenbosch? First, a little about my affair with Afrikaans. I grew up speaking it at home. Later, in 1976, when I was a student at the University of the Western Cape, I went through a period of disliking this beautiful language because I thought it was the language appropriated by minority rulers. Later in my life, I realised that being voteless didn’t negate mine and my community’s claim to the taal.
Now, in the year 2015, I never thought that I’d be a kampvegter for Afrikaans, given that my work- ing language is English and that my children also have English as their first language. But here I am, having been one of the 321 977 who watched Luister on Youtube.
The insert tells an emotional story about the experience of black students at Stellenbosch University. The students articulate their views and experiences of racism, a different culture and environment.
Listening to them, I found myself doing a colour count and saw the interviews dominated by, to use the ANC parlance, Africans. Why? Has the ANC’s discriminatory policy of defining brown people as not African also turned me into a racist? I have to admit that racism is not only a Stellenbosch problem, it’s a South African disease not helped by the government. We all have to stand against racism, otherwise it will destroy all of us. Some of the views raised in Luister are not new to my household as we have had two Englishspeaking sons who studied at Stellenbosch and were residents at Simonsberg.
My wife and I have seen them grappling with some of these racism issues. In their residence, the dominant culture was laced with braaivleis, rugby, red wine and beer. Our boys understood quickly that there were different standards: if Afrikaner students were having some student fun drinking and partying, their behaviour was acceptable. But if those who weren’t white were living it up, they were conforming to stereotypes of drunken coloureds.
Yes, there is racism at Stellenbosch. And yes, the culture is foreign, as it was to our set of twins who are now in the legal profession, and their friends. But they also knew that culture doesn’t change overnight. And as one of them said last weekend, they knew what to expect when they arrived at Stellenbosch as an Afrikaner tertiary institution.
What’s happening at Stellenbosch and all other tertiary institutions mirrors our society. Is Stellenbosch different from our schools? Are we not an evolving society? Change does not come without discomfort, contestation and even pain.
And as part of building that hopefully non-racial society, we should take a look at the realities of life. In a province such as the Western Cape, where Afrikaans is the most widely spoken language, Afrikaans-speakers should have a tertiary institution where they can study in their language.
This should not be seen as a ploy to keep non-Afrikaans speakers out. Furthermore, it should not be condemned as simply being part of a campaign to keep Stellenbosch mainly white. It’s high time that Stellenbosch at least started reflecting the demographics of the Western Cape.
Understanding the history of Afrikaans is to appreciate the contribution of the first people. Their descendants have legitimate reasons to fear for the future tertiary education of their children.
Because of fear of being labelled racists, and victimisation, few speak publicly of their right to tertiary education in their language.
But now is not a time to be silent, it is a time to speak up. Yes, Luister has stirred the pot in so far that it has painted only part of a picture.
But it has said nothing about the government’s segmentation of the black community into Africans and non-Africans, nor of the future of those brown people who want to continue their tertiary education in Afrikaans. How much longer will the dispossession continue?
Cruywagen is former Pretoria Newseditor, now a political commentator and author
What’s happening at the university and elsewhere mirrors our society